Around 90 per cent of financial fraud cases are not reported to the authorities, leading to the perpetrators going scot-free, Maharashtra Director General of Police Satish Mathur said on Thursday. Mr. Mathur was speaking at an award function at a city hotel, which also included a discussion on white collar crimes.
In his keynote address, Mr. Mathur said financial frauds are increasing and fraudsters sometimes go scot-free as they belong to influential families or to highly reputed organisations, which is why their crimes are not reported. In other cases, the organisations involved tend to sweep the matter under the carpet to avoid attracting bad publicity. “I have come across facts that indicate that the amounts involved in financial fraud are actually much higher than what is reported to us. We are not IT-savvy and often take help from experts in forensic and cyber crime detection,” he added.
Commenting on the changing trends of financial crimes, Mr. Mathur said financial crimes earlier consisted of someone calling up banks in late Prime Minister India Gandhi’s name and siphoning lakhs of rupees. Today, financial crimes are much more sophisticated, making use of software designed to hack bank accounts, steal data from companies, he said. “In certain cases, fraudsters have precise data about the victims, including when they are going to retire and what assets they own.”
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